As computers and communication devices become ever faster and the demand for communication bandwidth increases, there is a corresponding desire to increase the speed of connections between the components used in such devices to enable the devices to achieve the desired speed and bandwidth. Conventional electronic circuits are unable to achieve data speeds between components greater than about 10 Gbps over any appreciable distance. Accordingly, increasing attention is being directed to optical communication.
Optical signaling is an alternative to electrical signaling for high-speed communication links. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) are typical light sources in high-speed optical links. The light produced by the VCSEL is coupled to an optical medium (e.g., fiber or waveguide) and sensed at the receiver by, for example, a photodiode (PD). A VCSEL-based optical communication link requires a VCSEL driver to modulate the power of a VCSEL during the communication of signals.